NASA International Space Station On-Orbit Status 25 October 2016

The newly-expanded Expedition 49 crew is getting ready to grow lettuce to learn how to grow fresh food in space. Meanwhile, the International Space Station is getting ready for another crew swap.

New station crew member Shane Kimbrough is installing hardware and plant pillows for the Veg-03 plant growth experiment. The study is a validation of the tools and procedures necessary to grow plants to provide fresh food for astronauts.

He and his Soyuz crewmates Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko are in their first week aboard the station. They are familiarizing themselves with their new home in space where they will live until February.

Astronauts Kate Rubins and Takuya Onishi are researching how living in space affects breathing for the Airway Monitoring experiment. The duo were in the U.S. Quest airlock performing measurements to determine how much nitrogen oxide is exhaled and is diffused in the blood.

Commander Anatoly Ivanishin is packing the Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft that will carry him, Rubins and Onishi back to Earth Saturday night ending their four-month mission. They will be replaced in mid-November when Expedition 50-51 crew members Oleg Novitskiy, Peggy Whitson and Thomas Pesquet arrive inside the Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft.

On-Orbit Status Report

Veg-03 Initiation: FE-3 configured and installed the Vegetable Production System (Veggie) on the Maintenance Work Area (MWA) and then installed six Small Plant Pillows to hold the 'Outredgeous' red romaine lettuce plants. Ground teams plan to grow the lettuce plants for two months, with four harvests planned. The overall goal of Veg-03 is to further demonstrate proof-of concept for the Veggie plant growth chamber and the planting pillows. Future long-duration missions into the solar system, finally culminating on Mars, will require a fresh food supply to supplement crew diets, which means growing crops in space. Previous investigations focused on improving productivity in controlled environments, but the limited quarters of the space shuttle and International Space Station made it difficult to conduct large-scale crop production tests. Veg-03 expands on previous validation tests of the new Veggie hardware, which crew members will soon use to grow cabbage, lettuce and other fresh vegetables in space. Tests determine which types of microorganisms are present in space-grown cabbage, providing baseline data for future crop-growing efforts. Behavioral health surveys assess the impact of growing plants on crew morale and mood.

Airway Monitoring Ambient and Reduced Pressure Operations: Today FE-5 and FE-6 began the measurement day of the European Space Agency (ESA) Airway Monitoring experiment. The crew used the Portable Pulmonary Function System (PPFS) to perform a series of measurements for two different protocols: the Fractional Expired Nitric Oxide (FENO) Low Nitric Oxide (NO) Protocol which determines how much NO is exhaled during respiration, and the Diffuse Capacity in Lungs Nitric Oxide (DLNO) High NO Protocol which determines how much NO is diffused in the blood, while the crew was in the US Airlock. Airway Monitoring is the first experiment to use the US Airlock as a hypobaric facility for performing science. Utilizing the US Airlock allows for unique opportunities in the study of gravity, ambient pressure interactions, and their effect on the Human Body. This investigation studies the occurrence and indicators of airway inflammation in crewmembers, using ultra-sensitive gas analyzers to analyze exhaled air. This helps to highlight any health impacts and to maintain crewmember well-being on future human spaceflight missions, especially longer-duration missions to the Moon and Mars for example, where crewmembers will have to be more self-sufficient in highlighting and avoiding such conditions.

ISS Emergency Hardware Familiarization: The 48S crewmembers participated in a training session intended to familiarize the crew with the locations of equipment and the positions of valves used in the event of an emergency. During the training, the crewmembers translated along the emergency egress path inspecting emergency hardware components. For any questions they will consult with specialists at Mission Control Center-Moscow (MCC-M), Mission Control Center-Houston (MCC-H), Columbus-Control Center (COL-CC), and Space Station Integration and Promotion Center for Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (SSIPC).